this leads us to the third part of the story, but keep in mind what has come before us. july 4th, 1863, the confederate forces of vicksburg surrenders to grant's army. shortly after this, the mississippi is completely under the union control, and grant, who waged a brilliant, innovative, particularly for his day, campaign to take the city. when you look at what he does, it's amazing. but i would argue this is the wrong campaign at the wrong place at the wrong time. why do i say this? to prove this, i'm going to backtrack a little bit here. when the confederates began implementing bragg's plan to concentrate their forces, they concentrate in the west to meet the union offensive, the confederate commanders had a difficult choice. they got a very large area to expand and they have superior union forces coming after them. they're in a very tough spot. so, the question for the confederate high command is, okay, we're going to concentrate. okay, where? what matters? what do we protect? and the choice for them fell down to this. do we protect chattanooga? we know how important